Lancashire carers lead the way in ongoing wound care

The tool promotes regular evaluation and regulated practice when it comes to wound care in a community setting and makes it easier to quickly evaluate the stages of healing and the care that is required by the patient.

Janine Shepherd, clinical lead for the tissue viability service at the Trust said of the tool: “I’m so pleased that implementation of the WHAM tool has been successful and it’s great that we are setting an example to other clinicians outside of the organisation.

“Our main aim was to collect useful and accurate information such as healing rates to support judgement and ensure consistent care is being delivered across the board.

“Documentation is really important in nursing practice and can help clinicians to identify trends and monitor outcomes whilst ensuring continuity of care for our service users.”

Implementation of the WHAM tool has improved record-keeping and enabled clinicians to measure and monitor wound healing rates within their teams across the region. helping care users and patients better chance of gaining quicker recovery times and dealing with less chances of infection.

The project was implemented in a staged approach across clinical settings which ensured consistently high standards for patients and enables people to receive care from different locations.

Marnie Nixon, assistant practitioner at Lancashire Care said: “Each element of the WHAM tool has been developed with our service users in mind as this is ultimately about improving their quality of life and treatment.”

The quality of life of patients and care users is of utmost importance to the NHS and to Apex HSC and we welcome the usage of such tools to enable better care to be given to patients with more positive outcomes and greater synchronicity between care givers, care professionals and GPs and nurses.